I stumbled across an interesting article today - thought I would share.

"Quigo is not the household name that these other two search giants are. But the privately held company, which competes with Google (Charts) and Yahoo (Charts) in a key part of the online advertising business, is quietly becoming a bigger player."

Oh really?

"Quigo is benefiting from a perception of independence. There is general angst about the power that Google and Yahoo have and Quigo is able to sell against that. They have quietly replaced Google and Yahoo in a lot of newspapers for that reason," Sterling said.

So does that mean that size and weight can actually work against them in areas of perceived conflict of interest with publishers when it comes to advertising?

I've seen a growing tide of 'Is Google Evil?' type sentiment over the last year or so this is not exactly new. However this is the first business justification I have seen for old media to actually avoid 'feeding the beast', as it were, in favor of more independent ad networks operated by companies who are not 'competing for your business'.